July 12, 2022 • 19 mins
A lobbyist who formerly worked for Uber has dumped more than 100,000 internal documents recording various questionable practices Uber used between 2013 and 2017. It's worse than what we thought. Also, are you ready to pay a subscription fee to access your car's options?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how in the tech are you. It's time for
the tech news for Tuesday, July twelve, two thousand twenty two.
(00:24):
And let's start by talking about Uber. Now, long time
listeners have likely heard me talk about Uber's history, which
has included unethical and at least in some cases, potentially
illegal activities. And there's really been no secret that Uber
engaged in lots of questionable practices in its history and
(00:48):
an effort to become the dominant ride hailing company and
to quote unquote disrupt the hired car industry, taking aim
at taxis and town cars and such. And sure, Uber
kind of was marketed as a ride sharing service, but
in reality it's a ride hailing service. It's taking the
(01:09):
same place as you know, businesses like taxi companies. There
were tons of stories about Uber as well as rival
company Lift, engaging in Shenanigan's against each other in an
effort to undermined or or sabotage the other company, including
stories about employees allegedly arranging for rides on the competitor
(01:32):
service and then canceling those requests later on in an
effort to tie up drivers and frustrate them and to
clog up the scheduling systems of the rival company. It
all got really ugly. And now we're seeing more about
how ugly it actually got, thanks to a whistleblower who
handed over more than a hundred twenty thousand internal Uber
(01:56):
files that were created between twenty seventeen to various media
outlets like The Guardian. The Guardian, by the way, has
actually named the whistle blower as a former Uber lobbyists
who worked in Europe named Mark McGann. McGann said that
Uber's modus OPERANDAI was to quote essentially break the law,
(02:19):
show how amazing Uber's service was, and then change the
law end quote, and that McGann's work was largely to
smooth things over after Uber had gone and disrupted all
over the ding dang place, which sounds like a real
fun gig, right, Like the bully comes in, pushes people around,
then you come around and say, hey, it's not that bad,
(02:40):
it's okay. We're gonna we're gonna get through. This guy's
the internal documents paint a pretty gross picture. One was
something that actually reminds me of an older story, and
this was that Uber had a kill switch to prevent
law enforcement from accessing company data. In other words, if
the police come knocking, you utilize the kill switch to
(03:04):
get rid of any incriminating evidence. Now, for one, thing,
that makes me think of the good old days when
companies like Enron were accused of ordering employees to go
on a document shredding spree, Golli the late nineties man.
For another, this story actually reminds me of Uber itself,
which you know, developed tools specifically to allow drivers in
(03:28):
the Portland, Oregon region avoid law enforcement because that was
a region where Uber was not given permission to operate.
In fact, it was expressly told it would not be
allowed to operate there. So Uber said, you know what,
We're just gonna go ahead and operate there. We'll just
give our drivers the ability to detect police so that
they can appear to not be operating there whenever the
(03:51):
police are around, you know, everything on the up and up.
Other documents indicated more bad news about Travis Kalanik, the
former CEO of Uber, who either resigned on his own
accord or was strongly encouraged by the board of directors
to do so in the wake of multiple scandals about
Uber's corporate culture that all broke out in So in
(04:15):
this case, the documents suggests that kala Nik was aware
of and subsequently dismissed concerns about driver's safety, including instances
in which drivers were the victims of violence. Moreover, the
document show a pattern of strong arm tactics as well
as a rather unflattering betrayal of various government officials who
(04:36):
collaborated with Uber under ethically questionable circumstances. So, in other words,
these documents start to imply or at least tiptoe up
to a line that would mark illegal activities like bribery
and coercion, though it may very well be that to
the letter of the law, Uber was able to avoid
that distinction, not to mention, it also indicates processes on
(05:00):
what to do if police were to rate a company
office you know that kill switch thing that that is
just straight out illegal, and other questionable activities as well,
such as paying academics enormous sums like up to a
hundred thousand dollars in some cases. Two create reports that
helps steer press coverage to paint Uber in a positive light.
(05:22):
So essentially, Uber was paying for positive academic studies, and
that says a lot both about Uber and the academics
who accepted such payments and massaged facts to fit Uber's narrative.
You might tell that I'm more than a little upset
(05:42):
about that. So side note, any academic who does this
is acting terribly. In my mind, it's the kind of
crap that brings doubt into any sort of report. Now,
you should always look at reports with some skepticism, right,
You should ask questions like who funded the study? Who
(06:04):
funded the research? That's always going to be important because
if it turns out that the reports were paid for
by whatever entities were being reported upon, then it's kind
of hard to make an argument that the work is unbiased, right, Like,
if the checks are coming from the subject of the report,
then how critical will the report be? Not in some
(06:25):
cases it may still be unbiased, but it does raise
those sort of questions, And in this case, Uber was
expressly paying for biased reports that are being presented as unbiased,
which is pretty gross. Uber, for its part, has said
that McGann's documents are about the Uber of the past,
you know, pre twenty eighteen Uber, and that the company
(06:49):
has since made great strides to clean up its act.
And there is no doubt that much of Uber's more
recent history has been about damage control and addressing system
problems in corporate culture. But the company has also continued
to resist calls to designate drivers as employees. I mean,
it's impossible to deny the fact that Uber has acted,
(07:13):
in extreme cases to try and head off any attempts
to classify Uber drivers as employees. Uber also somewhat snarkily
pointed out the McGann had demanded a bonus payout upon
leaving Uber and seemed reticent to come forward until the
check cleared, which you know, shots fired. And maybe that's
(07:35):
the case. Maybe McGann was like, I want to make
sure I get paid before I start blowing the whistle.
And that can raise questions about McGann's own motivations, but
it doesn't change the content of those internal documents, right, Like,
we can say McGann's actions might be somewhat questionable, but
that doesn't change that there are really concerning things within
(07:57):
these documents. If Uber has fundamentally put that stuff behind it,
that's great. Um, it's the fact that this has come
to light and Uber has not really reckoned with that
that I think has raised concerns in a lot of
people's minds. Let's stick with some more car news now.
(08:19):
Have you ever sat in your car and thought, gosh,
if only car companies could sell options on a subscription model,
sort of like how I subscribed to streaming media or
two Xbox game pass, wouldn't that be something No? Well,
BMW clearly has thought about this, because the company is
(08:40):
now offering up a subscription service in some markets for
the luxury of drumroll please, heated seats. So to be clear,
these vehicles have all the technology that's needed to heat
the seats that's there in the car right off the
manufacturing law. However, to enable that ability, the driver will
(09:04):
have to subscribe to a service, paying approximately eighteen dollars
a month to have it activated. Now, the driver could
also choose to subscribe for a whole year for a
hundred eighty bucks per year or three years, which would
cost three thirty dollars, or to go unloaded access for
four fift bucks. Now, this is not the first time
BMW has done this sort of thing. By the way,
(09:26):
though it's the first I've actually heard of it. There
are some other high end features in some BMW models,
like adaptive cruise control, that in some markets are also
subscription based. Now we don't hear about this much in
the United States because BMW hasn't really rolled out most
of those features as subscriptions over here. But seeing car
(09:46):
manufacturers embrace micro transactions should have folks a little bit concerned,
simply because we could see similar strategies deployed in all
sorts of different products. It's a proven revenue generating model,
and if something works that comes to making money, you
can bet that that strategy will proliferate across different businesses.
Now let's get back to BMW. So with some features,
(10:09):
there is an ongoing cost to BMW. There are back
end operations necessary to make certain kinds of options work,
and in those cases, a subscription model could be a
very valid argument. It could be justifiable. You're thinking, well, yeah,
I have to pay per month to have access to
this ability in my car, but then BMW has to
(10:31):
maintain that service in the back end, so that makes sense.
But for something like heated seats, where the entire system
is already in the car from the get go. That's
a harder sell. In that case, what you're doing is
paying a fee to BMW to remove a restriction that's
on the vehicle, rather than to provide a new ongoing service. Anyway,
(10:51):
in the old days, you would just pay extra upfront
to buy a car model that has additional options, you know,
like heated seats. BMW appears to want to change that.
Maybe in the future all models will have all the options.
You'll just have to pay an ongoing fee to access them.
Fun times. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll
(11:12):
be right back after these messages. We're back with more
car news. So over in the EU, the General Vehicle
Safety Regulation has taken effect, and part of that regulation
includes a requirement that's starting in July of four, all
(11:35):
vehicles sold in the EU must include Intelligent Speed Assistance
or I s A. And you might be thinking, what
the heck is I s A. Technically, it's an it's A.
It's a group of anti speeding technologies, and the specific
technologies vary from implementation to implementation, because what's really important
(11:55):
is the intended goal of this technology. You know, there
are a lot of different ways of making it happen.
The important thing is that it happens. So the goal
is to use technology to first detect what the road
speed limits are on whatever road the vehicle is on
at the time, and then adjust operations within the vehicle
so that the car is not exceeding those road speed limits. Now,
(12:17):
apparently this can go so far as to cut power
to the engine in the event of someone speeding, which
sounds to me like that would be a bit of
a risky move, but less drastically, it's meant to signal
the driver should they be going a bit too fast.
I've been in a car that had a feature like that.
It was a car that was imported from Japan, and
it would chime at us whenever we would hit the accelerator,
(12:40):
which was sometimes necessary to do things like past another vehicle,
and it was incredibly irritating, but you know, effective, it
convinced us not to drive too fast because we didn't
want to hear that chime over and over again. And
the goal here is to cut back on traffic accidents
and injuries and fatalities, and we see that in results.
(13:01):
If we see that those numbers are much lower, it
would be very hard to argue against this kind of
technology because more people being alive really wins out against
just wanting to avoid a frustrating driving experience. Earlier this year,
I covered the company Peloton. Actually might have been the
end of last year, but that's the company that makes
exercise equipment, including the famous bikes and the infamous treadmills,
(13:26):
and really makes its money by having a subscription based
service to train on those. You have training sessions that
you can take using this equipment. The brand got very
popular early on in the pandemic, and the company ramped
up production, and then demand slacked off rapidly and the
company found itself overstocked with products. It was stuffed with
(13:47):
inventory and in a lot of trouble, and there were
a lot of other problems as well, But I don't
want to rehash my old Peloton episode. Instead, the news
today is that Peloton will no longer be manufacturing it's
own equipment. Instead, it will be partnering with a company
in Taiwan and outsourcing its production. The current CEO, Barry McCarthy,
(14:09):
is trying to turn the company around, and that's gonna
mean cutting way back on expenses. So that explains the
decision to outsource manufacturing. Peloton has received a lot of abuse,
some of it I think is justifiable, but I never
really want to see a company fail, you know, unless
that company is just pure evil. My hope is that
(14:29):
Peloton will course correct and will find a business model
that is sustainable and be able to reset from there.
And though I don't own any Peloton products, I don't
have any stake in the company, I just kind of
hope that the executive team can fix things. I mean,
I don't think I know anyone personally who actually owns
a Peloton bike or treadmill, but I do know that
(14:52):
the enthusiasts who have them are very passionate about the
the brand and the training sessions. So I think anything
that gets people to exercise is you know, that's kind
of a good thing. I sure, as heck, could use
more exercise in my life. But yeah, that's why I
kind of hope that they succeed. Nothing other than that.
(15:14):
The left leaning media watchdog Media Matters has reported that
Facebook and Instagram, both of which are owned by Meta,
played host to a great deal of anti lgbt Q
misinformation and hate speech over the course of June, which
of course was Pride Month. The organization accuses Meta of
trying to cash in on Pride by claiming to support
(15:37):
the l g B t Q community while simultaneously failing
to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation targeting
that same community. Media Matters says that right wing media
outlets spread lies about Pride events, including allegations that people
within the events were specifically attempting to groom children. There's
(15:57):
that narrative that we see over and over and in
certain extremist literature and media outlets. The organization said, META
has failed to enforce its own policy regarding misinformation and
hate speech while simultaneously trying to position itself as being
kind of a champion of the community. And that's not
a good look. The organization pointed out this past Pride
(16:20):
Month had several events that were targeted by extremist groups,
and Media Matters argues that the lack of enforcement of
policies on platforms like Facebook and Instagram can contribute to
those kinds of real world outcomes. And you know, we've
talked in the past about how these platforms can reinforce
beliefs and can promote radicalization and also can serve as
(16:46):
a platform for people to plan specific UH activities like
like violence or protests at different events, and considering the
extent that we've seen some of that via Lens as
well as kind of a general move in this country,
that being the United States to really push back against
(17:08):
the l g B t Q community. It's it's a
dangerous thing. It's a dangerous thing for a very vulnerable population.
In other Meta news, a couple of different media outlets
have reported moves within the company indicating that Meta may
be headed towards holding mass layoffs. First, The Information reported
that managers received note to identify people on their teams
(17:29):
who quote unquote need support and that poor performers should
be moved to exit just kind of a lame euphemism
for being terminated or fired anyway. The Washington Post subsequently
reported that this directive was the first step in managers
creating performance improvement plans, which could then be used as
sort of a guide for layoffs. And this is not
(17:50):
that big of a surprise. Mark Zuckerberg himself has told
employees that the company will be more aggressive in setting
employee goals and expectations, and that this might commence some
folks to leave meta, which is all aces in Mark
Zuckerberg's book. And I've said this before, but a lot
of company leaders seem to feel that it's better to
make a workplace less hospitable and thus push employees to
(18:10):
quit rather than to hold layoffs, particularly in cases where
the company might be on the hook to cover a
severance package. It's way easier to move on if the
employee has decided to leave the company on their own,
which is again gross. Okay, that's it for the news
for today. That's Tuesday, July twelve, two twenty two. If
(18:30):
you have suggestions, please let me know. Easiest way to
do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show
is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
(18:52):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how in the tech are you. It's time for
the tech news for Tuesday, July twelve, two thousand twenty two.
(00:24):
And let's start by talking about Uber. Now, long time
listeners have likely heard me talk about Uber's history, which
has included unethical and at least in some cases, potentially
illegal activities. And there's really been no secret that Uber
engaged in lots of questionable practices in its history and
(00:48):
an effort to become the dominant ride hailing company and
to quote unquote disrupt the hired car industry, taking aim
at taxis and town cars and such. And sure, Uber
kind of was marketed as a ride sharing service, but
in reality it's a ride hailing service. It's taking the
(01:09):
same place as you know, businesses like taxi companies. There
were tons of stories about Uber as well as rival
company Lift, engaging in Shenanigan's against each other in an
effort to undermined or or sabotage the other company, including
stories about employees allegedly arranging for rides on the competitor
(01:32):
service and then canceling those requests later on in an
effort to tie up drivers and frustrate them and to
clog up the scheduling systems of the rival company. It
all got really ugly. And now we're seeing more about
how ugly it actually got, thanks to a whistleblower who
handed over more than a hundred twenty thousand internal Uber
(01:56):
files that were created between twenty seventeen to various media
outlets like The Guardian. The Guardian, by the way, has
actually named the whistle blower as a former Uber lobbyists
who worked in Europe named Mark McGann. McGann said that
Uber's modus OPERANDAI was to quote essentially break the law,
(02:19):
show how amazing Uber's service was, and then change the
law end quote, and that McGann's work was largely to
smooth things over after Uber had gone and disrupted all
over the ding dang place, which sounds like a real
fun gig, right, Like the bully comes in, pushes people around,
then you come around and say, hey, it's not that bad,
(02:40):
it's okay. We're gonna we're gonna get through. This guy's
the internal documents paint a pretty gross picture. One was
something that actually reminds me of an older story, and
this was that Uber had a kill switch to prevent
law enforcement from accessing company data. In other words, if
the police come knocking, you utilize the kill switch to
(03:04):
get rid of any incriminating evidence. Now, for one, thing,
that makes me think of the good old days when
companies like Enron were accused of ordering employees to go
on a document shredding spree, Golli the late nineties man.
For another, this story actually reminds me of Uber itself,
which you know, developed tools specifically to allow drivers in
(03:28):
the Portland, Oregon region avoid law enforcement because that was
a region where Uber was not given permission to operate.
In fact, it was expressly told it would not be
allowed to operate there. So Uber said, you know what,
We're just gonna go ahead and operate there. We'll just
give our drivers the ability to detect police so that
they can appear to not be operating there whenever the
(03:51):
police are around, you know, everything on the up and up.
Other documents indicated more bad news about Travis Kalanik, the
former CEO of Uber, who either resigned on his own
accord or was strongly encouraged by the board of directors
to do so in the wake of multiple scandals about
Uber's corporate culture that all broke out in So in
(04:15):
this case, the documents suggests that kala Nik was aware
of and subsequently dismissed concerns about driver's safety, including instances
in which drivers were the victims of violence. Moreover, the
document show a pattern of strong arm tactics as well
as a rather unflattering betrayal of various government officials who
(04:36):
collaborated with Uber under ethically questionable circumstances. So, in other words,
these documents start to imply or at least tiptoe up
to a line that would mark illegal activities like bribery
and coercion, though it may very well be that to
the letter of the law, Uber was able to avoid
that distinction, not to mention, it also indicates processes on
(05:00):
what to do if police were to rate a company
office you know that kill switch thing that that is
just straight out illegal, and other questionable activities as well,
such as paying academics enormous sums like up to a
hundred thousand dollars in some cases. Two create reports that
helps steer press coverage to paint Uber in a positive light.
(05:22):
So essentially, Uber was paying for positive academic studies, and
that says a lot both about Uber and the academics
who accepted such payments and massaged facts to fit Uber's narrative.
You might tell that I'm more than a little upset
(05:42):
about that. So side note, any academic who does this
is acting terribly. In my mind, it's the kind of
crap that brings doubt into any sort of report. Now,
you should always look at reports with some skepticism, right,
You should ask questions like who funded the study? Who
(06:04):
funded the research? That's always going to be important because
if it turns out that the reports were paid for
by whatever entities were being reported upon, then it's kind
of hard to make an argument that the work is unbiased, right, Like,
if the checks are coming from the subject of the report,
then how critical will the report be? Not in some
(06:25):
cases it may still be unbiased, but it does raise
those sort of questions, And in this case, Uber was
expressly paying for biased reports that are being presented as unbiased,
which is pretty gross. Uber, for its part, has said
that McGann's documents are about the Uber of the past,
you know, pre twenty eighteen Uber, and that the company
(06:49):
has since made great strides to clean up its act.
And there is no doubt that much of Uber's more
recent history has been about damage control and addressing system
problems in corporate culture. But the company has also continued
to resist calls to designate drivers as employees. I mean,
it's impossible to deny the fact that Uber has acted,
(07:13):
in extreme cases to try and head off any attempts
to classify Uber drivers as employees. Uber also somewhat snarkily
pointed out the McGann had demanded a bonus payout upon
leaving Uber and seemed reticent to come forward until the
check cleared, which you know, shots fired. And maybe that's
(07:35):
the case. Maybe McGann was like, I want to make
sure I get paid before I start blowing the whistle.
And that can raise questions about McGann's own motivations, but
it doesn't change the content of those internal documents, right, Like,
we can say McGann's actions might be somewhat questionable, but
that doesn't change that there are really concerning things within
(07:57):
these documents. If Uber has fundamentally put that stuff behind it,
that's great. Um, it's the fact that this has come
to light and Uber has not really reckoned with that
that I think has raised concerns in a lot of
people's minds. Let's stick with some more car news now.
(08:19):
Have you ever sat in your car and thought, gosh,
if only car companies could sell options on a subscription model,
sort of like how I subscribed to streaming media or
two Xbox game pass, wouldn't that be something No? Well,
BMW clearly has thought about this, because the company is
(08:40):
now offering up a subscription service in some markets for
the luxury of drumroll please, heated seats. So to be clear,
these vehicles have all the technology that's needed to heat
the seats that's there in the car right off the
manufacturing law. However, to enable that ability, the driver will
(09:04):
have to subscribe to a service, paying approximately eighteen dollars
a month to have it activated. Now, the driver could
also choose to subscribe for a whole year for a
hundred eighty bucks per year or three years, which would
cost three thirty dollars, or to go unloaded access for
four fift bucks. Now, this is not the first time
BMW has done this sort of thing. By the way,
(09:26):
though it's the first I've actually heard of it. There
are some other high end features in some BMW models,
like adaptive cruise control, that in some markets are also
subscription based. Now we don't hear about this much in
the United States because BMW hasn't really rolled out most
of those features as subscriptions over here. But seeing car
(09:46):
manufacturers embrace micro transactions should have folks a little bit concerned,
simply because we could see similar strategies deployed in all
sorts of different products. It's a proven revenue generating model,
and if something works that comes to making money, you
can bet that that strategy will proliferate across different businesses.
Now let's get back to BMW. So with some features,
(10:09):
there is an ongoing cost to BMW. There are back
end operations necessary to make certain kinds of options work,
and in those cases, a subscription model could be a
very valid argument. It could be justifiable. You're thinking, well, yeah,
I have to pay per month to have access to
this ability in my car, but then BMW has to
(10:31):
maintain that service in the back end, so that makes sense.
But for something like heated seats, where the entire system
is already in the car from the get go. That's
a harder sell. In that case, what you're doing is
paying a fee to BMW to remove a restriction that's
on the vehicle, rather than to provide a new ongoing service. Anyway,
(10:51):
in the old days, you would just pay extra upfront
to buy a car model that has additional options, you know,
like heated seats. BMW appears to want to change that.
Maybe in the future all models will have all the options.
You'll just have to pay an ongoing fee to access them.
Fun times. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll
(11:12):
be right back after these messages. We're back with more
car news. So over in the EU, the General Vehicle
Safety Regulation has taken effect, and part of that regulation
includes a requirement that's starting in July of four, all
(11:35):
vehicles sold in the EU must include Intelligent Speed Assistance
or I s A. And you might be thinking, what
the heck is I s A. Technically, it's an it's A.
It's a group of anti speeding technologies, and the specific
technologies vary from implementation to implementation, because what's really important
(11:55):
is the intended goal of this technology. You know, there
are a lot of different ways of making it happen.
The important thing is that it happens. So the goal
is to use technology to first detect what the road
speed limits are on whatever road the vehicle is on
at the time, and then adjust operations within the vehicle
so that the car is not exceeding those road speed limits. Now,
(12:17):
apparently this can go so far as to cut power
to the engine in the event of someone speeding, which
sounds to me like that would be a bit of
a risky move, but less drastically, it's meant to signal
the driver should they be going a bit too fast.
I've been in a car that had a feature like that.
It was a car that was imported from Japan, and
it would chime at us whenever we would hit the accelerator,
(12:40):
which was sometimes necessary to do things like past another vehicle,
and it was incredibly irritating, but you know, effective, it
convinced us not to drive too fast because we didn't
want to hear that chime over and over again. And
the goal here is to cut back on traffic accidents
and injuries and fatalities, and we see that in results.
(13:01):
If we see that those numbers are much lower, it
would be very hard to argue against this kind of
technology because more people being alive really wins out against
just wanting to avoid a frustrating driving experience. Earlier this year,
I covered the company Peloton. Actually might have been the
end of last year, but that's the company that makes
exercise equipment, including the famous bikes and the infamous treadmills,
(13:26):
and really makes its money by having a subscription based
service to train on those. You have training sessions that
you can take using this equipment. The brand got very
popular early on in the pandemic, and the company ramped
up production, and then demand slacked off rapidly and the
company found itself overstocked with products. It was stuffed with
(13:47):
inventory and in a lot of trouble, and there were
a lot of other problems as well, But I don't
want to rehash my old Peloton episode. Instead, the news
today is that Peloton will no longer be manufacturing it's
own equipment. Instead, it will be partnering with a company
in Taiwan and outsourcing its production. The current CEO, Barry McCarthy,
(14:09):
is trying to turn the company around, and that's gonna
mean cutting way back on expenses. So that explains the
decision to outsource manufacturing. Peloton has received a lot of abuse,
some of it I think is justifiable, but I never
really want to see a company fail, you know, unless
that company is just pure evil. My hope is that
(14:29):
Peloton will course correct and will find a business model
that is sustainable and be able to reset from there.
And though I don't own any Peloton products, I don't
have any stake in the company, I just kind of
hope that the executive team can fix things. I mean,
I don't think I know anyone personally who actually owns
a Peloton bike or treadmill, but I do know that
(14:52):
the enthusiasts who have them are very passionate about the
the brand and the training sessions. So I think anything
that gets people to exercise is you know, that's kind
of a good thing. I sure, as heck, could use
more exercise in my life. But yeah, that's why I
kind of hope that they succeed. Nothing other than that.
(15:14):
The left leaning media watchdog Media Matters has reported that
Facebook and Instagram, both of which are owned by Meta,
played host to a great deal of anti lgbt Q
misinformation and hate speech over the course of June, which
of course was Pride Month. The organization accuses Meta of
trying to cash in on Pride by claiming to support
(15:37):
the l g B t Q community while simultaneously failing
to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation targeting
that same community. Media Matters says that right wing media
outlets spread lies about Pride events, including allegations that people
within the events were specifically attempting to groom children. There's
(15:57):
that narrative that we see over and over and in
certain extremist literature and media outlets. The organization said, META
has failed to enforce its own policy regarding misinformation and
hate speech while simultaneously trying to position itself as being
kind of a champion of the community. And that's not
a good look. The organization pointed out this past Pride
(16:20):
Month had several events that were targeted by extremist groups,
and Media Matters argues that the lack of enforcement of
policies on platforms like Facebook and Instagram can contribute to
those kinds of real world outcomes. And you know, we've
talked in the past about how these platforms can reinforce
beliefs and can promote radicalization and also can serve as
(16:46):
a platform for people to plan specific UH activities like
like violence or protests at different events, and considering the
extent that we've seen some of that via Lens as
well as kind of a general move in this country,
that being the United States to really push back against
(17:08):
the l g B t Q community. It's it's a
dangerous thing. It's a dangerous thing for a very vulnerable population.
In other Meta news, a couple of different media outlets
have reported moves within the company indicating that Meta may
be headed towards holding mass layoffs. First, The Information reported
that managers received note to identify people on their teams
(17:29):
who quote unquote need support and that poor performers should
be moved to exit just kind of a lame euphemism
for being terminated or fired anyway. The Washington Post subsequently
reported that this directive was the first step in managers
creating performance improvement plans, which could then be used as
sort of a guide for layoffs. And this is not
(17:50):
that big of a surprise. Mark Zuckerberg himself has told
employees that the company will be more aggressive in setting
employee goals and expectations, and that this might commence some
folks to leave meta, which is all aces in Mark
Zuckerberg's book. And I've said this before, but a lot
of company leaders seem to feel that it's better to
make a workplace less hospitable and thus push employees to
(18:10):
quit rather than to hold layoffs, particularly in cases where
the company might be on the hook to cover a
severance package. It's way easier to move on if the
employee has decided to leave the company on their own,
which is again gross. Okay, that's it for the news
for today. That's Tuesday, July twelve, two twenty two. If
(18:30):
you have suggestions, please let me know. Easiest way to
do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show
is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
(18:52):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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